1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a traffic control apparatus and method using navigation route information of a vehicle for each navigational situation and, more particularly, to a traffic control apparatus and method wherein, when estimating the predicted navigation route of a specific vehicle that is navigating, the navigation routes of the specific vehicle for respective navigational situations, which have been previously stored, are used.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most collisions between ships on the sea have been considered as being occurred due to the carelessness of ship navigators. Further, ship navigators who are responsible for navigation cannot always concentrate on navigation every hour, and have many difficulties when navigating ships while personally having to separately check and anticipate all the situations that may occur during a navigation procedure.
That is, in order to prevent collisions between ships which are navigating, a method by which a control center on the ground checks the movements of all ships, anticipates dangerous situations caused by the movements, and notifies relevant ships of the risk of a collision when there is a high probability that a collision will occur, is more effective than a method by which relevant ships determine whether a collision will occur and cope with such a determination.
Therefore, in current domestic/foreign principal ports, vessel traffic service systems have been installed and operated, and a control system for preventing collisions between ships caused by the navigation of the ships is provided.
However, in the prior art, a controller has performed traffic control in such a way as to intensely monitor a control screen on which the locations of relevant ships are displayed, check the distances between the ships or the like on the basis of his or her work experience, predict a probability that the ships will collide, and then control the navigation routes of relevant ships if it is determined that the probability of a collision is high.
Further, ships located adjacent to a relevant ship are identified using radar or the like mounted in the relevant ship, and the relevant ship takes into consideration the existence of the identified ships at the time of navigating.
Meanwhile, because of recent developments in maritime wireless communication technology, a ship can transmit ship information, including its identification information (for example, the name of the ship), to a control center using an Automatic Identification System (AIS). Accordingly, the control center can definitely determine which ship is located at a specific location on the sea. Generally, on the control screen of the control center, the current locations of ships or airplanes are displayed on a map, and the names of the ships or airplanes are simply displayed beside the current locations.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of network configuration of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) for merchant ships defined by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
Referring to FIG. 1, AIS implemented in each ship 10 enables various types of information such as the current location, course, speed, and state of the ship measured by a Global Positioning System (GPS) and other types of information to be transmitted to a control center 30 through a relevant relay station 20 on the ground. In this case, the AIS transmits the navigational situation information of a relevant ship even to adjacent ships, thus enabling all ships navigating on the sea to ascertain mutual navigational states. Meanwhile, the control center 30 on the ground is connected to user terminals 40 over a network (for example, the Internet), and then can provide information about ships which are navigating on the sea to the user terminals 40.
However, such a conventional control scheme ascertains only the current location and name of a ship and does not provide a method of controlling ships based on the navigation routes of the ships. Therefore, there is no great difference between such a control scheme and control schemes that preceded it.
That is, a controller must still intensely monitor the control screen on which the locations of ships are displayed, and must predict the probability of the collisions between ships by checking the locations of ships, the mutual distances between the ships, etc. on the basis of his or her work experience.
However, since this control method is subjectively performed depending on the experience of the controller, the risk of causing accidents is always present, and the navigation routes of relevant ships are not taken into consideration, so that performing more precise control is accompanied by a lot of restrictions.
Further, since a controller must continuously intensely monitor maritime situations every hour, he or she feels more fatigue and is then easily susceptible to carelessness, with the passage of time.
Therefore, methods of allowing a controller to perform more precise control by estimating the predicted navigation routes of ships and by providing the predicted navigation routes to the controller are required. Further, there are required methods of automatically predicting a possible accident scenario, and of, when there is a probability that a collision between ships will occur, detecting the probability of the collision between the ships, and notifying the controller of the probability of the collision in advance, with the result that the collision between ships can be prevented.